Hollowbodies

In all my years of playing I've never touched a hollowbody. Can anyone give me the low down on them? Do they play more like an electric or an acoustic? Do they sound ok playing with a little bit of drive or are they strictly clean? What should I be looking for in a hollowbody that I wouldn't be looking for in a regular electric? Anything is appreciated.

they definitely sound and feel like an electric, but they have a bit more warmth and an openness that is absent in solid-bodies.

as far as drive goes, hollows shine with a little bit of drive. it seems to open them up harmonically and it lets you get the best out of them. they can, under careful use, handle fairly high amounts of gain, but are very prone to feedback when doing so. therefore, they are typically limited to moderate amounts of gain

they feel very like electrics to play, they're often just balanced weirdly, as the body is hollow, its very light, unlike a solid electric. i own a westfield es335 copy that i bought when i was 14, purely based on how it looked. to this day, i know little about hollowbodys, but it plays fantastically aswell, and considering it's a fairly low end guitar, i love it.

the reason they're hollow, according to wikipedia (the most trusted of all sources!... or not, but i can't be bothered to do tonnes of research, so don't try and bite my face off if it's wrong) is just so they're that bit louder when not plugged in, they aren't intented to replace an acoustic. my guess is, it makes a slight difference in tone, because of how differently the guitar will resonate compared to a solid guitar and such, but i'm really not sure how much difference that will be.

EDIT -the guy above has a point with gain. they're VERY hit and miss with high gain sounds. i use mine for alot of cleans and crunchy sounds on recordings and such, i've only ever used it for a high gain distorted guitar 4 or 5 times (although, i loved the results). i doubt we'll see Meshuggah using Rickenbacker 330's any time soon

I deeply regret the 6661 in my username. Siiiigh. Damn you, 14 year old me, you edgy little bastard.

Two Epiphone Casinos, a Rickenbacker 12 string, a Gretsch 5120, and a Gretsch White Falcon.

If you have never played a hollow body, you have never played a guitar. They are that great. Sure I love my Strat and Tele, but the real fun in playing guitar comes with a hollow body. They just have more life to them. Their sound is alive. It breathes. I know that all sounds weird, but it is true.

They are comfortable to play and when you have one strapped to you, you really feel as though you have a guitar in your hands. I play them mostly clean, but set any of my hollow bodies (except the Ric) on the bridge pickup and they can really rip and roar. If you want to play them with drive, well, listen to The Beatles "Revolution" and tell me if they sound great with drive or not (that's a holow body Casino making that glorious racket in that song).

Once you discover hollow body electric guitars that's all you will want to play and own.

Two Epiphone Casinos, a Rickenbacker 12 string, a Gretsch 5120, and a Gretsch White Falcon.

If you have never played a hollow body, you have never played a guitar. They are that great. Sure I love my Strat and Tele, but the real fun in playing guitar comes with a hollow body. They just have more life to them. Their sound is alive. It breathes. I know that all sounds weird, but it is true.

They are comfortable to play and when you have one strapped to you, you really feel as though you have a guitar in your hands. I play them mostly clean, but set any of my hollow bodies (except the Ric) on the bridge pickup and they can really rip and roar. If you want to play them with drive, well, listen to The Beatles "Revolution" and tell me if they sound great with drive or not (that's a holow body Casino making that glorious racket in that song).

Once you discover hollow body electric guitars that's all you will want to play and own.

this man knows his stuff....

They are more like an electric...but they feel better...almost alive in your hands...currently saving for one right now...

The rap against true hollowbodies is that they can be somewhat prone to feedback at high volumes. This is why the Gibson ES-335 style (and all of the various ES-3xx varieties) is a semi-hollowbody, with solid wood running down the middle under the pick-ups (and thus two hollow "wings" on either side).

In response to the people who like to insist that Hollowbodies have feedback issues, I'll quote Tim Armstrong. "My Gretsch never feeds back..... Unless I want it to."

True Hollowbody guitars are light like acoustics, and have a warmer tone than solid electrics, they can handle high gain if that's the way you want to go, and tonal capabilities depend entirely on the pickups.

My Hollowbody is a Sparrow Big Daddy with a Bigsby and P90s. It can go from sparkle and twang to snarling overdrive, but it's not so good for the metal.

i personally think that the 'mixing console input stage clipping combined with tape over-saturation' distorted tone on revolution is a terrible example of how hollowbodies handle overdrive simply because it's nothing like the sound you'll get from overdriving an amp

hollowbodies are very nice though imo, i find they have a certain 'sweetness' to the sound that solidbodies generally lack.

as for playability, semi-hollows will definitely feel a lot more like a solidbody. With a full-hollowbody the way they respond to how you play them is a little more like an acoustic guitar such as the attack and decay of a note, but the action should feel more like an electric than an acoustic - although i must admit some of the more jazz-orientated hollowbody electrics i've played have had a much more acoustic feel to them, too.

I like analogue Solid State amps that make no effort to be "tube-like", and I'm proud of it...

You almost have to go instrument by instrument. AND you have to be very careful to distinguish between semi-hollows (which are much like solid bodies), chambered guitars (which look and act like solid bodies, and are called semi-hollows if they have F holes), and fully hollow guitars.

Some fully hollow guitars (like the Taylor T5) are basically acoustic guitars with a pickup mounted on them somewhere. I have a T5, and feedback is no different from an ordinary acoustic guitar - really nasty. Others (like the Artcore guitars from Ibanez) are somewhat heaver, and made of laminated woods (i.e. plywood). These are heavier and less prone to feedback, but not much less. Don't point your amp right at you, sit off-axis.

I have been itching to try out the new Ibanez Pat Metheny Jr. (PM35NT) to see how it behaves, and what it sounds like. Maybe it can get the Metheny or Montgomery sound. I did get to play it unplugged, and it sounded very good. I tried out the new Godin 5th Ave. Kingpin, and it sounded pretty good but I didn't like the feel of it. YMMV.

i personally think that the 'mixing console input stage clipping combined with tape over-saturation' distorted tone on revolution is a terrible example of how hollowbodies handle overdrive simply because it's nothing like the sound you'll get from overdriving an amp

Wrong, oh never-experiment-with-an-amp guy. If you experiment with an overdriven solid state amp, you can get that exact "Revolution" Casino tone. I can get the board induced "Revolution" tone by overdriving many of my amps. Ever use a tone control? You can get some wild sounds when you know how to use them correctly. A Casino into an overdriven amp is a thing of wonder. It can sound just like "Revolution."

If you want to know, I use my Crate cheapo from the 80s solid state amp to get that "Revolution" tone. Go buy one and see just how wicked the overdrive can be.

Hey CasinoEpiphone, how are the P90s on those Casinos treating you? I've been looking to drop some Phat Cat P90s into my Sheraton (I know it's not the same as true dog-ear P90s, but it beats making bigger holes in my guitar ) because the 57 classics on my Sheraton are too muddy sometimes... do you get more clarity and chime with the P90s?

EDIT: sorry for the confusion; I have a Sheraton II, not a Sheraton... I always forget to add the "II." I forgot the Sheraton did have mini-humbuckers lol

The humbuckers in my Sheraton II are full-size; I have a Gibson 57 classic in the neck and a 57 classic plus in the bridge, but I wanted to switch to the dog-ear P90s. which would leave slight gap above and below from the existing humbucker cavity. The Seymour Duncan Phat Cat P90 is a humbucker-sized P90 (like the Gibson P94), but people say it's not quite the same (and I've never personally tried them.. yet). I'm a little hesitant to put p-rails on a semihollow, but they'd get a p-90 like tone?

Wrong, oh never-experiment-with-an-amp guy. If you experiment with an overdriven solid state amp, you can get that exact "Revolution" Casino tone. I can get the board induced "Revolution" tone by overdriving many of my amps. Ever use a tone control? You can get some wild sounds when you know how to use them correctly. A Casino into an overdriven amp is a thing of wonder. It can sound just like "Revolution."

If you want to know, I use my Crate cheapo from the 80s solid state amp to get that "Revolution" tone. Go buy one and see just how wicked the overdrive can be.

yes, i do use tone controls, i do experiment with amps, i don't specifically want to nail that revolution tone, though, so i'm not gonna go hunting for some old crate amp that can produce a tone i'm not really chasing

perhaps i worded it wrong but my point is that the revolution tone is quite a distinctively unconventional overdriven tone, and i don't think it should be used as an example of how hollowbodies sound different to solidbodies when overdriven, because the reason why it sounds different and unique is because of the way they recorded it, not because they used hollowbodies.

Still, i think if i was gonna use any example just to prove that hollowbodies can handle overdrive, there are two words i would use - Ted Nugent. the only thing i know about ted nugent having rarely listened to anything he's done is that he uses a full-size hollowbody with a lot of gain and it seems to work very well

I like analogue Solid State amps that make no effort to be "tube-like", and I'm proud of it...

Hey CasinoEpiphone, how are the P90s on those Casinos treating you?... do you get more clarity and chime with the P90s?

Well, they don't give me the clarity of my Tele and Strat, nor do they give me the chime that my Rickenbacker gives me. Simply, the P-90s offer a thicker sound than the single coils. They can be clear and they can chime, no doubt. But I see P-90s as offering a more solid, classic rock tone. Has some beef to it.

I will also add that string choice is important with my P-90s. On one Casino I have roundwounds and it really does shine bright - chimes on the high strings, and surprisingly clear on the low strings. On the Other Casino I have flatwounds and it plays like a Jazz guitar. A nice warm sound.